Public-Comment Limits May End

County supervisors today will consider repealing the stringent limits on public comment it adopted two years ago to curb a local gadfly who they said was holding the board’s weekly meetings hostage.

Under the proposal by Supervisor John K. Flynn, members of the public would once again be permitted to speak on topics during the time supervisors are debating them and preparing to vote.

Since February 1998, remarks from the general public have typically been limited to an 8:30-to-9 a.m. time slot.

The policy has proved unpopular. People have complained that they often are forced to speak early in the morning on an issue that will not come before the board for several hours. They have no opportunity to speak out once the debate begins.

“That was being criticized greatly by the public,” Flynn said. Among the most vocal were a group of airplane owners critical of the director of the county’s airport system. “I think that [the current policy] has chilled, if you will, public comment. The public wasn’t able to disagree,” Flynn said.

He said the policy was adopted to deal with persistent disruptions caused by gadfly Carroll Dean Williams. In January 1998, Williams addressed the board for more than an hour, commenting on 14 issues for the allotted five minutes each. Williams also tried to make a citizen’s arrest of the board, claiming that supervisors conspired to commit a crime by preventing him from discussing another matter.

County Counsel Jim McBride concluded that the supervisors had committed no crime, and the meeting went on without any arrests.

Then-Chairwoman Judy Mikels vowed to put an end to the the public spectacle, which she said made a “mockery of the system.” The limits on public debate were imposed a week later.

Flynn said he’s never felt comfortable with the limits, but didn’t do anything about it until the airplane owners complained that they weren’t getting enough of a say at meetings.

“I don’t think we should change a system just because of one person,” Flynn said. “We have 750,000 in the county.”

He noted that Williams hasn’t been around much lately. “If [he] comes to the meeting and wants to start it all over again, I’m going to first of all pray he doesn’t come, and second of all talk with him before the meeting starts,” Flynn said.

Flynn said he feels fairly confident the other supervisors will agree, since the March 7 election is just three weeks away. “I’ll bet you money no one will vote against it,” he said. “Especially at election time.”